


New York and Its Fallout - 2012

by FemSanzo291



Series: Keeping Secrets [19]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Amputation, Battle of New York (Marvel), Character Death, Christmas, Deaf Clint Barton, Dubious Science, Good Loki (Marvel), Kid Peter Parker, M/M, Mental Link, Post-Battle of New York (Marvel), Pre-Battle of New York, Prosthesis, Resurrection, Tahiti (Agents of SHIELD), Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-08-11 21:49:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 19,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20160634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FemSanzo291/pseuds/FemSanzo291
Summary: Alea Carter knew something would be going down when she couldn't get ahold of Clint though her mental link with him. So, when it turns out that he's been taken hostage by Loki of Asgard. Then things go down hill and Coulson is killed, New York is destroyed and Coulson is brought back. Then her brother is almost killed by men who blow up. And it all started with the inability to get ahold of Clint.AKA: The Avengers, though to Iron Man 3.





	1. May 2

It was just past one am when Alea jolted awake. Her heart was pounding as she looked around the small room that she was using on the Helicarrier. Nothing was out of place. She tossed her legs over the side of the single-sized bed. She strained her ears to see if it was any odd sounds that woke her. She couldn't hear anything. So she pulled her legs up and crossed them, thinking of what might have woke her.

Then suddenly she felt fear flow through her link with Clint. Then there was nothing. She tried to enter his mind but was pushed back by another’s presence in his mind. She then switched to trying to contact Coulson. She got through to him. 

_“Phil, what the hell is going on? I can’t get ahold of Clint.” _

_“I’m not sure. The Joint Dark Energy Mission Facility is gone. Underground, I don’t know about Clint just yet. He’s alive, at least.” _

_“That’s good. See you when you get back.” Alea left Coulson’s head._

Alea got dressed in her SHIELD uniform before making a mad dash for the bridge. Once there she could see the SHIELD agents running around trying to sort things out. Alea pulled her comms unit from her pocket and tried to get in contact with Fury.

**"What do you want, Carter?"**

"I want to know what you know about Barton." Alea started down to her lab.

**“He’s under the control of Loki of Asgard. Apparently, he’s Thor’s brother. We don’t know where they're going, but they have the Tesseract.” **

“Great, get ahold of Banner. Hell, get Stark, we have to find the Tesseract,” Alea starts to run things on the computers to find Banner.

**“Coulson should be there soon. Get him to call in Romanoff to get Banner and tell him to get Stark. I’m going to go get Rogers. I’m activating the Avengers’ Initiative no matter what the WCS says.”**

“Got that.” She pulls her comm out of her ear knowing that when Coulson got there he’d be in some sort of distress and would need comfort. 

It was about half an hour later that Coulson came stumbling into the lab. He took the seat closest to the window and Alea went over to him. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and he leaned in resting his head against her stomach. He wrapped his arms about her waist. He started to shake with sobs.

“Edwin, turn off all audio recording devices.” 

**“All audio recording devices are turned off, Little Dear.”**

Alea rubs Coulson’s back before starting to speak to him. “We will get Clint back. I promise. I will make sure of it.” 

Coulson nods before pulling back and wiping his eyes on his sleeve.

“Did you get in contact with Fury?” Coulson pulls off his jacket and tosses it over his shoulder.

“Fury wants you to handle Stark. He wants Nat on Banner.”

“Have you contacted Natasha yet?” 

“Nope, she’s on a mission and won’t be happy about being pulled, so you can do it.”

“Alright, I’m headed up to the bridge so I can head to New York after talking to Natasha.” Coulson headed out of the lab.

Alea gets the lab-ready before heading out herself. She knew that if the Avengers' Initiative was activated she'd have to be careful about where she was at due to the people that were part of the team. So, she gets everything she would need out at the lab and headed down to her small room. She'd wait for orders from Fury, or till she was needed somewhere on the Helicarrier. 

Alea decided to try to get into Clint’s mind until she was called upon.


	2. May 3

Alea was standing on the deck of the Helicarrier as a quinjet landed. She knew that Coulson was coming in with Rogers and Natasha with Banner. So, she headed into the Helicarrier and up to the bridge.

“Carter!” Maria Hill came up behind her as she stepped into the bridge.

“What do you need Hill? I’m in a hurry.” Alea makes her way down to the agents working on the computers.

“I want to know where you are going to be while the Avengers are here.”

“Anywhere they aren’t. Well except for Barton and Romanoff. I’m going to try and get Barton free, but I haven’t been successful so far. Anything else? Or can I get back to my job so we can get into the air quicker?” Alea glared at Hill and dared her to ask another question. 

“No, your good. Keep your comm on channel three.” Maria then leaves her to do her job.

Alea does one last check-in with the agents before leaving and heading down to double-check the cage for the Hulk. When she was done there she heads on down to the medbay. Alea takes a seat on the closest gurney and takes out her comm unit and sets it to channel three. After that, she slid it into her ear and entered Coulson’s mind.

_“Hey, Phil, do you feel anything though your connection with Clint?” _

Alea knew that Clint and Coulson had developed a slight metal link and could feel emotions from each other no matter how far apart they were from each other. Sometimes they can even feel each other better then Alea could feel them.

_“No, I can’t. Also, where are you right now? Natasha wants to talk to you.”_

_“Medbay. I’m trying to get hold of Clint, but if they get Loki to tell me. I want to try and get into his mind and undo it from him.” _

_“Will do. Sending Natasha your way.” _

Alea turned towards the door and waited for Natasha to show up. Soon Natasha slid open the door and walked over to her. 

“So, I couldn’t get a straight answer out of Coulson, but what exactly happened to Clint?” Natasha sat down next to her.

“Clint was taken control by Loki of Asgard. He’s Thor’s brother. I didn’t really know what was happening at first because I was jolted awake by Clint’s fear and didn’t know what woke me til another jolt happened before there was nothing. I can’t get ahold of Clint, and Coulson still can’t feel him.”

“That’s not good. I’ve never not known them not able to feel each other.”

“It’s not. I’m on channel three for comms contacting.” 

“Good, I’ll keep that in mind. See you after this is all done with.” Natasha stands and leaves the medbay.

Alea leans back and waits for information to come in about Loki. She’d love to help them find Loki and Clint, but the want to say out of the spotlight keeps her there. 

Several hours later, when the Avengers returned with Loki in hand Alea went up to the Hulk containment unit where’d they put him. Just before she made it into the area Fury stopped her.

“Carter, are you going to go talk to that madman?” 

“Yes, I need into his mind to see if I can’t find Clint.” 

“Fine, be careful. I don’t want you to spill anything that you shouldn’t.”

Alea glared at him. “Fury, you think I’d spill something that I’m not supposed to. You still don’t know my last name.”

Alea walks into the area and looks at Loki for what she thought was the first time. His back was to her, but when he heard her enter he turned around. It was the man that was in Thor’s interrogation room two years before.

“Ah, who is the little lass?” 

Alea didn’t answer as she made eye contact with him. She entered his mind. 

_As she stared into his mind it seemed very muddled. Even more so then when she entered his mind from Thor’s. There was very little of himself there in the forefront of his mind. Which was very odd. Any mind that she entered had oodles of memories floating around in the fronts of their minds. None of that was happening in Loki's mind. So, Alea decided to dive deeper. As she went deeper there wasn't anything that she normally saw. Then there was a wall that she couldn’t pass. Nothing was normal about Loki’s mind. It scared her. She pulled out of his mind and back into the real world._

“What were you doing in my mind?!” Loki was ticked off.

“I was looking. Just looking. Nothing more nothing less. I was hoping to find out how to free my friend from your control.” Alea backed up to the side of the railing that encompassed the catwalk.

Loki’s face showed wonder and hatred all at the same time. “Why would you use your powers to find one measly human?” 

Alea looked at him fully. He was much less put together then he was that day two years ago. He’d lost all of that wonderful composer that he had as well. “I trust the man that you know the location of with my life. So, I want to find him, and free him of your control.” 

Alea left knowing that there was no way to get into that part of Loki’s mind so she heads back to her room. She knows that they will likely come to get Loki. So, she’d free Clint then.


	3. May 4

Alea was walking around close to engine four when engine three exploded. She turned on her comm unit and started towards the engine. 

“Do we know who did that?” It was then that there was another explosion. Closer to where she knew the lab was.

**“We think it might be Loki’s mind-controlled agents. That second one was a quinjet going through the lab.”** It was Hill.

“Shit. Alright, I’ll head up top and see if I can’t get to some of the agents and knock them free. Pretty sure a good blow to the head might free them.” 

**“I’ll repeat that out.”**

“Good.” Alea headed to her room to grab a few things, mostly her air mask and helmet before heading up to air deck. Once there she grabs one of the harnesses and straps in. She knows that it has a long enough reach to make it to the third engine. She clips it to the side of the door as she goes out and then heads out across the deck.

As she makes it to the engine she sees Iron Man come flying to work on the engine. She decides to back off and just make sure that her brother gets out of restarting the engine. She pulls out her phone to watch the progress of the engine. Soon the debris was free and Tony had started to manually spin the engine.

Suddenly her tablet starts to go off and she looks down to see the warning about a short out in the computer bay. It had taken out the first engine. 

“How fast are we going down?” 

**“Too fast for my comfort. Can you come help knock out some agents?” **It was Fury this time. That meant that it was Maria that was contacting the others.

“Sure, but the one that I’m going for is Barton. Got that?” 

**“Good, because he’s causing the worst problems right now. He took out two engines.”**

“On it.” Alea puts her phone away and starts back to the Helicarrier. She pulls out her transceiver and switches it to channel E.

“Ed, where’s Clint right now?” She unhooks herself from the harness before heading into the Helicarrier.

**“The Archer is currently headed to the Hulk Chamber.”**

“Thanks, Ed.” Alea switches the transceiver back to channel three before heading the way that she knew that Clint would take from the lab to the chamber. About halfway there she can see Natasha fighting with Clint were she knocks his head on the railing and he doesn’t get up again.

“Good job, Nat. I’ll take him to the medbay and clear his mind.” Alea calls for two medical personnel to help move Clint.

“It wasn’t all that hard. I knocked him around, hit him hard twice and that was that.” Natasha took one good look at Alea before continuing, “Also, you look like shit. Something like what I think Clint will look like when he wakes up.”

Suddenly Alea bent double in pain as something shattered in her head. She tried to find which connection had shattered, but her mind was too scattered to find it. As she collapsed, Natasha caught her and cussed. 

Natasha activated her comm and asked for medical officers to come immediately. Not realizing that she was on channel three she got a response that she wasn’t expecting. Fury responded to her, **“I just sent medical down there for Barton. Did you get injured as well?” **

“No, it’s Carter. Something happened and she’s in immense pain. I can’t get any sort of response from her.” 

As Natasha looked over Alea again she noticed that Alea had tears running down her face. Natasha had never seen Alea cry, and this caused her worry to spike.

**“Will do.”**

Natasha switched her comm back to channel one and waited for the medical officers to arrive. It was then that a heart-shattering announcement came over the comms. ***“Agent Coulson is down.”**

**“Medical is on it’s way to you.”**

**“They’re here. They called him.”***

It was then that Natasha that she knew what had happened to Alea, the mental link that she had with Coulson must have been broken. When medical came and got Alea she followed them to medical. There was no reason for her to listen to Fury’s speech that he was no doubt about to give. Not when two of her friends were under distress and the third was dead.

When they got there they laid Alea down on the gurney that she’d been sitting on the day before. Clint was on the gurney behind her strapped to it with restraining straps. Natasha flipped down the seat between the two gurneys to wait for one of them to wake.

It took a few minutes for Alea to come around, but when she did she was panicked. She sat up and looked over at Natasha. “Is Phil alive?” 

“No, he was killed. Not sure how, but medical called him not too long ago. Fury was there.”

Alea was pissed. She punched the wall with her left hand and left a dent in the wall. “Shit, so that’s what a mental link shattering with death feels like. It hurt so fucking much. Just as bad as having my arm implanted.” Alea tossed her legs over the side of the gurney. “How’s Clint?” 

“Not awake yet. His Loki problem should be clear. Though his connection with Coulson might have caused some of the same pain that you experienced, right?”

“Could. No-one else has ever had a connection that strong between two people without my ability. I didn’t even know that was what I’d feel.” Alea stood and walked over to Clint. She opened his right eye before entering his mind.

_Clint’s mind was a mess, to say the least. It was never like this before. Memories were scattered about without any organization at all. Alea went to where she knew she’d be able to communicate with him._

_“Clint, you there?” _

_“Yeah, I hurt all over. Mostly my head.” Clint’s voice was weak._

_“Do you feel like yourself again?” _

_“Mostly, my head feels different. More like it was before I was working for SHIELD. Got any clue why that is?” _

_“Phil was killed. I’m guessing it was Loki or one of the men he controls. Other than that I don’t know much. Medical called it and Fury was there when he was called.”_

_Alea was then tossed out of Clint’s mind as he became overwhelmed. Pushed out by the memories of the kids and Phil._

Alea lets Clint’s eyelid close as she comes back to herself. Natasha was standing behind her and she let herself fall back against her. “Clint isn’t going to be happy when he wakes up. I told him that Coulson is dead.” 

“Carter, why did you do that?” Natasha forced him to stand on her own.

“Because he deserves to know. He is.. he was married to Coulson!” Alea took a deep breath before continuing, “Clint would be more distraught if we waited to tell him after this all blew over. I know this as a fact.”

It was then that Clint’s hand tightened. Alea watched as he woke up.

“I’m going to murder Loki.” Clint starts to struggle against his restraints and Alea undid his right arm.

Clint undid the other arm before standing up. 

“Clint, Loki isn’t in his right mind either. I’m pretty sure he’s being controlled as well.”

It was then that Rogers came and gathered both Clint and Natasha. Alea stays behind and goes to find Fury. She slips into Clint’s mind to keep watch on what the Avengers were doing. Though she keeps that as a secondary action knowing that she needed to talk to Fury. When she gets up there she sees Coulson’s Captain America cards with what looked to be blood on them in Fury’s hands.

Alea rushed over to him before starting on him, “What the hell Fury? I know those were in his locker. Why did you do that to them?” 

“It’s what was needed to push the six of them together. What’s it to you?”

“He was going to give the whole signed set to his son. Now they’re ruined.” Alea took the cards and looked at them. Over half of them covered in something close to blood. When Alea lifted them to her nose and took a sniff it the fake blood that she’d made the day before. Both of the cards and the bottle of fake blood had been in Coulson's locker.

“Fury you do something like this again I will kill you. I know that Coulson’s death was covenant, but still, I don’t think you had to go this far.” Alea holds up the cards before putting them in her jacket pocket. She then walked over to where Hill was sitting at the computer bay.

“Hill.”

Hill looked up at her as she settled down in the seat next to her. “Carter, how did Barton take the news?” 

“Not well. I was thrown from his mind after telling him.” Alea closed her eyes and allowed her mind to slip to where she’d left the connection to Clint open.

_As she watched through the current thoughts and sights of Clint she could see what was going on in New York. Aliens invading from a portal above Stark Tower. Clint was on a rooftop almost out of arrows. Alea watched as he ran out and gathered one before switching bow settings. As she jumped off the building he flipped and shot the arrow. It was the grappling arrowhead. _

Alea opened her eyes to see Fury walking out onto the deck with the rocket launcher.

“What the hell is Fury doing?” Alea stands and walks over to the doors.

“World Security Council wants to launch a warhead at New York. Fury’s trying to stop it.” Hill said from her place behind Alea.

“Inform Stark. He should be able to do something with it.” 

“Will do.” 

Alea heads down to where Coulson’s locker was to clean it out. She knew she wasn’t going to be on the ground in New York. So, she busied herself with moving everything over to either her or Clint’s lockers. Coulson’s uniform bag went to hers and most of the rest went to Clint’s. In the back of the locker was Coulson’s wedding ring. Alea took it and put it in her pocket. That she’d give to Clint personally. 

**“Carter, all the Avengers are alive. Sitwell’s bringing Loki’s scepter to you for preliminary study. Got that?”**

“Yes, but if Clint heads home I’m going with him. Got that Fury?” Alea closes Coulson’s now empty locker and pulls his nametag from it and leaves her key in the door. 

**“Understood.” **

“Good, because I thought I was going to have to threaten you, or at least punch you.” Alea heads up to the deck to get a jet and head to HQ.

_“Clint, I’m headed to HQ. If you head home to come and get me. Got that?” _

_“Loud and clear, Lea.” _

Alea takes the jet and goes to HQ. Once there she heads down to her normal lab. When Sitwell comes up with the box containing the scepter Alea takes it and got to work.

In three hours she realized that it wasn’t powered by the Tesseract, but something similar. Though she heard that Loki had been brought to HQ and went to talk to him.

When she got down to holding she saw that he had on something preventing him from talking on, but she didn’t need him to talk. No, she was going into his mind for the third time. 

_Loki’s mind was muddled. But she was able to go through past where she was blocked off from before. Once there she saw the only point of communication that he had._

_“Hello, little lass. How are you getting into my mind?” _

_“My powers. Am I right to say that New York wasn’t your plan?” _

_Loki doesn’t answer verbally, but the fear that he is emitting tells her that it wasn’t him. Someone was controlling him during New York. That was all she came for. To see if he was the mastermind behind New York and taking control of Clint._

_“Who was the man I killed? Stark said his name was Phil?” Loki’s voice was filled with genuine concern._

_“Phillip James Coulson, Agent of SHIELD. He was a father of two young kids. Five and one. He was married to a fellow agent. One that you had under your control these past few days.” _

_“I didn’t get his partner killed did I?” _

_“No, his partner lives on.”_

_“Good the children are not alone.” Loki was relieved and his rapidly beating heart rate slowed down. _

Alea was pulled out of his mind by someone grabbing ahold of her shoulder and yanking her back. When she looked up it was Thor brother of Loki.

“What are you doing down her young one?” Thor lifted his hand off her once he had her attention.

“Your brother, he is a good man at heart. It wasn’t his idea to attack New York.” Alea leaves the room and heads up to the barracks. 

“Agent Carter are you in need of a room?” the agent in charge of resting who was staying in the barracks asks.

“Has either Romanoff or Barton came up here?” Alea’s hand goes to her pocket where she had Coulson’s ring.

“Barton did. He’s in room twelve. It’s one of the double rooms.” 

“Thanks, you can mark me down in room twelve as well.” Alea starts down the hall and stops in front of the room. She raises her hand and knocks on the door.

Clint opens the door. Alea sees his bloodshot eyes and messed up uniform and pushes her way into the room. When she looked around the room she sees the few items she had on the Helicarrier against the far wall. Clint’s was there as well. Also what she'd moved of Coulson's.

“How did you get my stuff and yours down here?” Alea goes to sit on the bed that was already messed up.

“Nat, she helped me. She’s gone to get the last of our things from the quinjet.” 

“Then get your butt over here and sit next to me.”

Clint moves over to sit next to her. Once his butt hits the bed he collapses against her. Alea puts her arm around him and puts his head near her heart. He starts to cry again. Alea rubs his back and just waits for him to stop crying. When he does so he sits up and looks at her.

“Rogers said that Phil’s cards were bloodstained. They weren’t on him though? He was planning on giving them to Coop, he’d have kept them in his locker.”

“Your right. Fury got them out and got that fake blood I’d made last night to prank Sitwell on them. They’re all ruined. Did you go to clean out the lockers?” 

“No, Nat said you’d moved all of Phil’s stuff to mine and yours. She said she didn’t see his ring though.”

“Because I took it with me when I cleaned them out. You should sleep.” Alea pulls it out of her pocket and hands it to him. He holds it agist his chest as the sobs start again.

Eventually, the sobs die down and Clint looks at her with his bloodshot eyes. “Don’t want to sleep alone.” Clint’s voice was weak.

“I’ll sleep here tonight. Has my bag from my room made it down here yet?” 

Clint nods and Alea lays him down on the bed. She goes over to the pile of bags and finds hers before heading to the small bathroom. She takes a quick shower before putting on a shirt and a pair of shorts. She heads back out into the room and finds Clint’s sleeping pants, his boxers, and one of Coulson’s shirts. 

“Clint, go get cleaned up.” Alea shoves the clothes into his hands and forces him to the shower.

Alea goes ahead and brushes though her hair before going through some of Clint and Coulson’s stuff. She was looking for a pillowcase or one of the blankets that they had on them to remind themselves that they weren’t alone when they couldn’t be together. She found Clint’s shoved in the bottom of his room bag. She pulls it out and sees the small PJC embroidered on it. She lays it out on one of the beds and waits sitting on the other. 

There was a knock on the door and Alea goes over and answers it. When she opens the door to see Natasha standing there. She had three bags with her.

“That the last of our stuff?” 

Nat nods and puts it against the wall. “I forgot how long you’d been on the Helicarrier. You and Coulson both. Are you staying with Clint tonight?”

Alea nods. “I’ll probably end up in the same bed as him, so if you want to stay here you can.”

“No, I’m going to keep an eye on Loki’s room.”

“Don’t kill him. He wasn’t in control of himself.” 

Natasha nods before leaving. 

Not long after that Clint comes back into the room. He goes straight over to the bed with Coulson’s blanket on it. He drops down on it before saying, “Alea will you stay in the same bed, tonight?” 

Alea gets up and walks over. Alea slides behind Clint and hugs him as he falls asleep. It takes her a bit longer to do so, but eventually, she fell asleep as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Between the asterisks comes straight from the first Avenger’s movie. I liked Fury speech too much to change it.


	4. May 5

When Alea woke the next morning, it was to the sight of Natasha standing just inside the room with the door closed. She could feel that Clint had rolled over to face her. His arms were wrapped around her chest and his head was resting next to her heart. She looked in Clint’s ear to see that he’d taken out his comm/hearing aid combo unit at some point.

“Nat, is Clint’s aids in the bathroom?” 

Natasha goes over to the bathroom and comes back out a moment later. As soon as she was in Alea’s line of sight she nods. Nat then places them on the end table. She then moves to sit on the other bed. Both of them stay still waiting for Clint to wake up.

Clint starts to move about ten minutes later. His arms tightened their grip around Alea before letting go. Alea flops back onto her back and looks over at Clint.

“How are you feeling today?”

“Numb. When is Thor taking Loki back to Asgard?” Clint flops back onto his back as well. That’s when Alea sees that he had one of his behind-the-ear aids in his left ear. 

“Today. Fury’s told me that Coulson’s funeral is tomorrow if that’s alright with you.” Natasha stands and walks over to sit next to Clint on the bed.

Clint nods and tears start to run down his face. “Has anyone told Laura about it?” 

“Not that I’m aware of. Rogers asked if Coulson had any family, but because it wasn’t on file I didn’t say anything. Stark doesn’t know and Banner wasn’t there at the time. Fury said he’d send out a notification if you wanted him to.”

“No, I want someone to go get them today though. Though only after I’ve informed her.”

“I’ll head off after you tell them. Do you want me to get your phone?” Alea sits up on the bed.

“No, I want my tablet. Too tired to try to hear over a call.” Clint sits up and moves to sit against the headboard.

Alea gets up and walks over to their bags. She finds her laptop first and takes it over to the bed. She boots it up and loads up Skype. She finds Laura’s number and calls it before handing it to Clint.

**“Clint thank goodness your alright, Clint, Alea, Nat. Where’s Phil?”** Laura was holding Lila as the call connected. The computer must have been far enough back for her to see all of them.

Clint looks at her before moving both of his hands in the sign for again. Laura puts Lila in her lap before repeating with signs what she just said.

“Phil’s dead. Killed before the Battle in New York.” Clint signed as he spoke. Alea watched his hand stutter when he signed Coulson’s name sign. He was slow in making the p and the forward motion that was compassion almost wasn’t made.

Alea heard Laura start to cry and then,** “Aunt Laura what’s wrong?”** It was from Cooper. He must have come into the room.

**“Did something happen to Papa or Dad?” **

Alea looked over to see Cooper walking towards Laura and the computer. 

**“Cooper, your dad is dead. Killed yesterday.”**

Alea watched as Cooper ran over to Laura. **“Dada’s dead?” **

“Coop, your dad died a noble death. He was trying to stop a bad man.” 

**“What does that mean?!”** Cooper’s shout caused Lila to start to cry. 

**“It means that your Dad isn’t coming back. We are going to go to his funeral when they decide to have it.”**

“The funeral is tomorrow. He’s going to be buried in a graveyard in Virginia. Alea’s going to come to pick you guys up and bring you.”

**“Alright, I’m going to go get the kids ready. I’ll see you later, Alea.” **

“See you.” Alea grabbed her bag before changing into her civilian clothing. When she left the room Clint was still talking to Laura. Alea heads down to the garage and grabs the keys to her quinjet. She makes her way over to it and gets ready to take off. 

She pulls over the headset as she puts her phone in the docking base. “SHIELD. 0-0-3 to command, asking permission to take off.” Alea fully puts the headset on.

**“SHIELD. 0-0-3, you are cleared for takeoff.”**

Alea hears the aircraft doors open and Alea turns on the clocking. She gets it clear of the hanger before radioing in, “SHIELD. 0-0-3, clear.” Then she turns on the autopilot.

**“Where to Little Dear?”**

“Clint and Phil’s house.”

**“Right away.”**

Alea sits back and thinks back to when she first met Coulson. He was young, not much older than most college graduates. He fell in love with the job very quickly and was one apart that Alea never doubted was a SHIELD agent though-and-though. Then Coulson met Clint and Alea knew that Clint had already fallen in love with him. That was because Coulson had been given a name sign by Clint. One that was still mostly the same even now. The only difference was that the c sign was changed for p. That and when she knew that Clint had truly fallen in love with Coulson was when that happened. 

As the quinjet started to descend Alea stood and lowered the ramp. She made her way down the ramp and out of the jet. She took a deep breath of the fresh country air before waking up to the porch and knocked on the door. Alea heard bare feet running towards the door before it opened to reveal Cooper.

“Aunt Lea!” Cooper rushed forward hand wrapped his arms around her chest. 

“Hey Coop. Where’s your aunt?” Alea rubs Cooper's head.

He looks up at her before answering, “Lila’s room. I’ve already got my bag ready.” 

“Good, go play. I’m going to go to help your aunt.” Alea pushes Cooper off to play. She then heads up to Lila’s bedroom. When he gets up there she sees Laura holding a few diapers and a change of clothes. Lila was standing up in her crib. 

“Laura,” Alea says as she knocks on the door with her left hand. The metal made a thudding sound that caused Lila to giggle. Laura turned to look at her. 

“Alea.”

“You ready to go?” Alea walks into the room and picks up Lila from her crib. She settles her on her right hip.

“Mostly, neither of the kids have proper black clothes.”

“That can be fixed once we get to DC. I need to contact Clint and tell him to get headed there.” Alea started down the stairs to find Lila’s stroller. Once she does she places Lila in it and get’s Cooper to go get his bag before telling him to meet them on the jet. 

Alea gets Lila’s stroller out to the jet and straps it into it the seat straps. Alea had reinforced her stroller for just the use. Cooper then came running onto the jet with his SpongeBob themed backpack. He also had Lila’s diaper bag.

“You're being such a good boy, Coop. Helping your aunt get everything ready.” Alea heads up to the cockpit to get her phone and massage Clint. She unlocks it and goes to her messaging app. She pauses when she notices the top chat. It was one with Coulson. Labeled, _Agents 1 & 2._ She scrolls down a little and finds the texts with Clint only. It was labeled, _Hawk & Mind._

_Mind: Clint met me at the Triskelion. I don’t want to fly into NY._

Alea put her phone back down as Laura comes onto the jet.

“Hey, Cooper do you want to come up here and sit in the co-pilot's chair?” 

Cooper nods and puts his bag down before running to the front of the jet. Alea straps Cooper into the co-pilot’s chair as she hears Laura dropping a chair to sit in. 

“Ed, can you turn off the co-pilot’s controls?” Alea sits down in the pilot’s chair and picks up her phone. 

**“Baby-sitting protocol activated. Young master is safe to fly there.” **

“Thanks, Ed.” Her phone vibrates in her hand and she looks down at it. She had gotten a response from Clint.

_Hawk: Sure. Your lab right?_

_Mind: Yes. If Nat’s with you she can take our stuff to my place in VA._

Alea then puts her phone back, closes the ramp, and then takes off. She sets the autopilot to go to the Triskelion. “How do you like the view, Cooper?”

“It’s amazing.”

“It is. Isn’t it?” Alea stands and goes to get Lila from her stroller. Laura follows her back up to the front of the jet. Lila starts to giggle as soon as she could see out the window. Alea smiles at the two kids’ joy at being in the sky. Alea sits back down in her chair and plays with Lila in her lap.

About half an hour later Alea puts Lila back in her stroller and picked up the headset as she sits back down.

**“SHIELD. 0-0-3 this is control. Are you landing at the Triskelion?”**

“Control this is SHIELD. 0-0-3. Yes, I am planning to land at the Triskelion. Is there an open space at the hanger?” Alea turns off the autopilot.

**“SHIELD. 0-0-3 you are cleared for landing. Hanger spot two.” **

Alea moves the quinjet around to get it ready to descend into the hanger as soon as they opened it. “SHIELD. 0-0-3, ready to land.” They then open the hangar door and Alea maneuvers it into the second spot. Once she turns off the jet Laura comes up and unhooks Cooper from his seat. Alea gets up and hits the ramp lower button. She moves to unhook Lila’s stroller before grabbing the diaper bag.

“Cooper, grab your bag.” Laura grabs her own before gripping Cooper’s hand. Cooper grabs his bag and slings it onto his shoulder.

“Let’s go.” Alea leaves the jet with Laura following. She then heads to her lab. No-one stops them because of Alea’s glare. 

When they make it to the lab Alea unlocks it with her fingerprint. Once in she sees Clint sitting at her desk. He was looking through old pictures of Coulson on her computer.

“Papa!” Cooper takes off across the lab, tossing his bag to the floor as the door shuts. Clint turns to look at him, a small smile coming to his face. Cooper makes it to him and Clint lifts him. 

“You ready to go?”

“Yes.” Clint starts toward her. Before heading out of the lab he grabs the harddrive with PJC written on it. 

They head down to the garage. Alea finds the one SUV that had two car seats in it. They get Lila settled in her car seat before Alea collapses the stroller, and puts it in the trunk. Clint slides into the backseat helping get Cooper into his car seat. When Alea walks up to the diver’s door she shuts the backseat door. 

“Carter.” 

“Sit with your kids Clint.” Alea gets into the SUV and pulled out of the parking spot.

She heads to the closest clothing store that would have clothes for the kids to wear to the funeral. 

“Where are we headed Alea?” Clint taps her on the top of her head as he spoke.

“Clothing store. Coop and Lila don’t have proper clothes for tomorrow.” Alea pulls into a parking spot and they go to find Lila a dress and Cooper a suit.

“On the matter of proper morning clothes, where’s my suit?” Clint was helping Cooper back out of his suit as he asked.

“My place. Remember the last funeral that we went to was the Parkers'? I had you go back and lock down the house because I got that apartment in New York so I’d be closer to Pete? Nat said that you’d left it there after.” 

Clint comes out of the dressing room and hands the suit to Alea to hold. “Good to know. That one fits the best.”

“Good.” It had taken over half an hour to find a suit that fits the boy well enough for him to stand to be in it all day. They’d already gotten Lila’s clothes sorted out and Alea heads to check out. She buys the clothes before heading back out to the car.

They head on to her house. They make it there and Alea notices that Natasha's normal car was parked in the driveway. They get the kids out of the car and into the house. Natasha meets them at the door.

“I got the crib and playpen set up. Both were Peter’s weren’t they?”

“Yes, never really any reason to exchange them. Did you get the other crib mattress out?”

“Yes, I did.” 

“Coop, go play.” 

Cooper runs off to the living room and finds the Duplo bricks on the floor. Laura puts Lila on the floor next to Cooper and tells him to watch over her.

Alea heads to the kitchen and the rest of the adults follow. They all sit and talk about Coulson. Eventually, Alea gets up and makes dinner. After dinner, they put the kids to bed and sit back down to continue to talk. Around ten Clint passes out and Natasha and Alea carry him to the guest bedroom. They all go to bed knowing that tomorrow would be a rough day.


	5. May 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have went back and edited Clint Barton a bit. Mostly so it matches what I wanted to do. Also I removed the reference of Alea having a name sign.

Alea woke the next morning to sobbing coming from across the hall. She wasn’t sure who was crying, but she got out of bed and walked across the hall. She opened the door and saw Clint sitting up in the center of the bed. Clint and Coulson had always used the room across from hers. Last night they must have put him in the room because of habit. Alea made her way into the room and over to Clint.

“Clint.”

Clint looked up at her before scooting to the edge of the bed. Alea embraced him and started to soothe him. He starts to calm down and when his sobs stop Alea pulls back. She looks at his ears to see that he only had one aid in.

“My head hurts. Mostly my ears.” Clint reaches up and starts to pull at his hair.

Alea reached down and removed the hearing aid. She drops it down onto the bed. She then puts her hands on top of Clint’s, trying to get him to let go of his hair. Once he does Alea forces him to look at her.

“Clint, what you worried about?” Alea signs Clint’s name sign. One that Coulson had given him. It was the c sign followed by the sign for archer.

“Kids not remembering Phil. Lila especially.” Clint didn’t use Lila’s name sign. He fingerspelled it. 

“We will help them. We tell stories. We show pictures. Don’t let them forget.” 

“Not enough.”

“It is.” Alea heard Lila’s cries.  “Need to get ready. Want me or Natasha to help?”

“Natasha.”

Alea nods and goes to find where Natasha was. Alea found her downstairs in the kitchen. 

“Nat, Clint wants you to help him get ready.” 

“Sure. I’m sure Laura wants your help with the kids.” Natasha heads back upstairs. Alea follows her up and heads to the room Laura took. It was the one that Natasha had put the crib in for Lila’s use. Alea knocks on the door frame and hears Lila giggle. Laura turns to look at her.

“Alea will you give Lila a bath?”

“You got Cooper?” 

“Yes.”

Alea goes over and picks up Lila. Walks over the diaper bag and picks it up before heading to her bathroom. She sits Lila on the floor along with her diaper bag. She then starts to run a lukewarm bath. Once there was enough water in the tub she turns off the water and picks up Lila. She takes her over to the counter and pulls off her footie pj's. She then checks the diaper to feel if it was wet before taking it off. She then sits Lila in the bath to play.

After five minutes Alea finds Lila’s baby shampoo and wash in her bag before getting to work cleaning her up. After that was done, she gets her out and dries her off, before putting on a new diaper. She gathers up the bag and allows Lila to walk out in front of her.

They make it to the stairs and Alea plucks her up and walks down the stairs before sitting her back down once she made it down. Alea dropped the diaper bag next to the bottom of the stairs as Lila toddled off into the living room. 

Alea went to the kitchen to start Clint’s favorite breakfast, pancakes with chocolate chips. As she did so she heard the rest of the occupants of the house come down the stairs. She heard Clint drop into a seat.

When Alea finishes the first few pancakes she puts them on a plate and puts them in front of Clint before putting the tips of her right hand together and moving her hand towards her mouth. Clint nods and picks up the fork that Natasha or Laura must have gotten out while she was preoccupied.

She makes chocolate chip pancakes for Cooper and herself, but made plane pancakes for the rest. When she turned with the fished plates Laura had Lila on her lap and Cooper was waiting for her to put his plate on the table. Alea placed Cooper's plate first, then Laura’s and Lila. Lastly, she had hers and Natasha’s. They ate in relative silence, Lila the only one making any sounds.

After breakfast, Alea, Laura, and Natasha all go and take their showers. Alea forgoes the arm cover when dressing, instead, she grabbed her black leather gloves. She found her old black suit and put it on. Coulson wouldn’t blame her for not wearing a dress, knowing that she hated them. When she leaves her room she sees Laura trying to catch Lila.

“You want me to get her dressed?” Alea catches Lila as she runs past her.

“Yes. I need to get Cooper and myself dressed. Natasha’s helping Clint. Does he even know how to tie a tie?” Laura hands Alea Lila’s black dress that they’d found the day before to wear. 

“Laura where’s her socks, shoes, and diaper cover?” Alea put Lila on the floor to run around while she went to find the rest of her clothes. Laura comes out of her bedroom dressed in a black dress and the rest of Lila’s clothes in her hand. She hands them over to Alea.

“I wouldn’t put Lila’s shoes or socks on. Not til we’re in the car headed there. She tends to lose them everywhere.” 

“Noted, I’ll put them in my bag. Going to go ahead and put on the diaper cover.” Alea grabs Lila again and puts on the diaper cover before carrying her down the stairs. She sits her down after they get down the stairs and let her run off until it was time to go. Cooper came down the stairs fully dressed and ready to go. He looked like a proper little gentleman. Next was Laura who went to watch the two kids while Alea prep her bag. After a while, both Natasha and Clint came down the stairs. Clint was pulling at his tie and Natasha had on a long dress. 

“We ready to go?” 

Natasha nods and helps get Clint out to the car. Alea grabs her bag and Cooper before heading out with Laura and Lila following after. They get everyone into the car and Alea heads off to the funeral home. Once there Laura puts on Lila’s socks and shoes. They get out and head into the funeral home. 

It was a quiet and small funeral with half a dozen agents in attendance. Fury was up near the front along with Hill. Alea spotted Sitwell near the back and a few of the higher-level agents along with him. Alea took Laura and the kids to the front. Natasha almost had to drag Clint to the front.

Fury spoke some words before they moved to the graveyard. Those who left then, which were most of the SHIELD agents, Alea removed their memories of Laura and the kids. Leaving only Sitwell after to be wiped after the burial. Alea had a hold of Lila who was tired of being quiet, and Cooper was standing in front of her asking, “Why are they burying daddy. He can’t do his work if he’s underground.”

“Coop, come here.” Natasha beckoned him over to her all while tears were leaking from her eyes. Alea noticed then that she was also crying. Tears freely flowing down her face. She looked over at Fury to see him as emotionless as normal and Hill had tears leaking down her face as well. They’d lost a good agent, no a good man, that day on the Helicarrier. All assembled knew that.

As Coulson’s coffin hit the ground six feet down did Alea noticed that Clint was no longer next to her. Alea reached out to her with her mind and found it odd that she couldn’t feel Coulson’s bond right next to Clint’s even though she knew he was dead. Still, she went down the connection she had with Clint and tried to enter his mind. He had blocked her out though. Alea handed Lila over to Laura and waited until they had Coulson completely covered before looking around for Clint. 

She didn’t see Clint at first glance, so she turned to Sitwell and entered his mind as he left. She altered his memories removing Laura and the kids from his memories. She then left his head. 

“Carter something wrong?” Hill comes over to the group.

“Clint’s missing. I can’t get ahold of him through our link. Going to have to look for him old school.” Alea looks around for the best places for Clint to hide and spots three big trees.

Alea walks over to the closest one to see if she could spot Clint up in it. She spots a black dot near the top of the tree and decides to climb up.

“Alea, what are you doing?” Natasha asks as she grabs Alea’s right shoulder.

“Getting Clint down. You know as well as I do that he goes for the highest place that he can when he’s emotionally compromised. I was surprised that I didn’t have to pull him off the roof this morning. Anyway, this is why I wore a suit today.” Alea shakes Natasha off and starts climbing. 

As she makes it to the top she knows Clint is crying from how he is shaking the tree branches he is holding onto. "Cint you are going to fall if you continue to cry like that. These tree branches probably won't hold if you keep shaking them like you are."

“I don’t care. Let me fall. At least then I might be able to join Phil in the afterlife!” Clint moves enough that he slips out of the tree and Alea grabs him by his collar as he falls past her. She feels the branch that she had a hold of with her left-hand start to brak and mumbles, “Oh, fucking hell.” Then the branch brakes and both of them fall out of the tree hitting several branches on their way down.

They hit the ground not long after and both moans. “That hurt.”

“Your fault for climbing the bloody tree.” Alea lets go of Clint finally and sit up. She takes stock in her injuries and is surprised to see that she didn’t break any bones. She then turns to Clint and sees him wincing as he sits up. “Break a rib over there?” 

“Yes,” he wheezed. 

Alea laughed before leaning over Clint. She put her hand on his chest and started to feel for how his ribs were broken. “Two fractured ribs and one broken.” She then pushed her healing power to fix his ribs.

“Be glad that it was you, Clint. If Alea had been injured in that we’d be going to the emergency room right now.” Natasha put Lila down and she ran over to Clint and hugged him.

“Papa!” 

Clint hugged Lila before standing with her in his arms. “I guess. Alea when do you want to fly us back to Missouri?” 

“As soon as Fury decides if he wants you to be apart of a debrief with the Avengers.” Alea glares at Fury asking him to make Clint go to debrief.

Fury walks over to them and says, “Barton and Carter can go wherever they want as long as I get a written report within a week of now. Romanoff has to stay here and attend a debriefing tomorrow.”

“Then let’s head back to my place and get you packed up.” Alea stands and starts towards the SUV, “Natasha can you go and clean out Coulson’s offices?” 

As they load up the SUV Natasha answers, “Sure, send them to the homestead?”

“Might be better to fly them out yourself,” Alea answers. 

“True. Then Stark might have a harder time of figuring things out.”

“Exactly.” 

Once they get back to the house Alea packs a suitcase for herself and gets most of Clint and Coulson’s stuff off the Helicarrier put in the back of the SUV before seeing if Clint needed any help. “Clint anything that you and Phil have left here over the years that you want to bring with us?”

Clint points over to the small cabinet in the corner of the room. Alea knew that it held many of Coulson’s collectibles that he didn’t want to keep in the Bedford apartment or any off his offices. Alea went over and started to look through it. She saw many of them would be fine to take without having to protect them too much because Coulson had left them in their boxes.

“Do you want Nat or I to go up to Bedford and clean out the apartment?”

“Yeah, that would be good. I don’t want to go back there.” Clint shoves a suitcase over that Alea knew was Coulson’s. She takes it and puts it outside the room as she goes to get a few boxes to put Coulson’s collectibles in. On her way back past she stops Natasha saying, “Clint was their apartment in Bedford to clean out the apartment.”

“Will do.”

Alea heads back into the room and quickly and efficiently put Coulson’s collectibles away. After that Natasha helps them get it all into the SUV before Alea drives back to base and gets clearance to take the SUV to the hanger. They unload everything and Alea tosses the SUV keys to an agent to take back to the garage. 

“Clint you should do your paperwork on the way over. It’ll be the best time to do it.” Alea hands him back the paperwork and Clint gets to work on it. Alea pulls out her copy of it and starts to do the same. Cooper falls asleep somewhere over Ohio and Lila fell asleep over Illinois. 

Not long after Lila fell asleep Clint came up to Alea and handed her his report. Alea had finished her report not too long before and took his almost too small report and looked at him.

“Didn’t put anything when I was under Loki’s control. If Fury wants that I’ll put it in another report, but not my report of my actions during New York.”

“I’ll agree with you there. I was just wondering. Anyway, we are almost to your house so I’d strap in.” Alea puts the reports in her bag and takes back control of the jet. During the landing, the jet jostled enough to wake Lila, but Clint picked her up and soothed her before she started to cry.

Once on the ground Alea drops the ramp and unhooks Cooper from his seat and carries him into the house. She takes him into his bedroom, before going to the master bedroom and waiting on Clint.

When Clint comes in an hour later he looks worse then he’d looked all day. He walked over to the bed and face planted into it. He doesn’t roll over and Alea leans over him and shoves him onto his back.

“Why save me? My husband is dead and there is nothing left for me to live for,” Clint mumbles. He looks at Alea with the most miserable look on his face.

“You do have something to live for, the two kids that love you laying in their beds in this very house.” 

“They’re not mine! Phil provided the sperm and Laura carried them! I did nothing for them! I haven’t even been here to care for them!” Clint tried to get away from Alea’s grip on him, but she didn’t let him go.

“Clint! Stop it! Cooper loves you. I know this because every time I come out here without you he asks where you are! Lila calls you Papa and I know she knows it’s you! That you're her papa! You’ve been around both of the kids enough that they know that you love them!” Alea forces Clint to be still and look at her.

As she keeps him still he eventually falls asleep. Alea sits up and goes over to the guest bedroom and changes into pajamas before heading back into the master bedroom to watch over Clint. She slid onto the bed and sat against the headboard, falling asleep hours later.


	6. May 9

Alea woke with a start just after two am. Her head was pounding and she didn’t know why. She wasn’t even sure where she was. Soon her head calmed down to throbbing pain and she decided to focus inward on the mental links. 

_She comes across Rhodey and Tony’s first, both untouched since she was fourteen, but still in one piece. Then there was Peggy’s which she hadn’t used in years, along with Bucky’s which had last been down to change the memory locks the year before. Then to what should have been a blank space next to Clint’s but wasn’t. Phil Coulson’s mental link to her had reformed spontaneously. Alea headed down the link and ended up in Coulson’s mind. He was in extreme amounts of pain and it must be why her head was still throbbing. She went looking around in his head to see if he knew what had happened to him. After a few minutes, she could see something that worried her immensely, the writings that the subjects of Project TAHITI were compelled to write before they had their memories erased. She then decided to pull out of his mind._

“Fury, I’m going to kill you,” Alea mumbled. She got out of her bed. She knew where she was, the guest room of Phil and Clint’s house. She walked out of the room and over to the master bedroom. She opened the door and saw Clint sitting up and crying. Alea slipped into the room before closing the door back. 

She walked over to the bed and looked at his bedside table to see both of Clint’s purple hearing aids sitting on the table. Alea sat down gently on the bed before tapping his wrists. Clint looks up at her and points both of his pointer fingers before twisting his wrists in opposite directions. His face is contorted in pain as he does so.

Alea makes sure his eyes are on her hands before making the Y handshape and shaking it twice between the two of them. She then makes a hook with her pointer finger and taps it above her right ear.

Clint leans back and grabs his left hearing aid off the table. He turns it on before sliding it into his ear. “I can’t think straight. What’s happening to my head?”

“Not one-hundred percent sure, but I woke with a splitting headache as well and I checked my links. Phil’s was there as strong as it ever was. Do you mind me going in to look for your link with Phil?” 

Clint nods and looks her in the eyes.

_Alea enters his mind and starts to look around his head. She goes to where his mental links are and sees three mental links instead of the two that should have been there. The two strong ones, Alea’s and Phil’s links pulse strongly and in the same cadence. The last one Natasha's link was dim in comparison. Alea pulls free of his mind._

“Your link with Phil is back as well.” 

“What does that mean?” 

“That I’m about to call Fury and yell at him.” Alea walks back to her room and unplugs her cell from the charger before going back to Clint’s room. She unlocks it as she sits down on Clint’s bed and then goes to her calls app. She dials Fury’s cell number before putting it on speaker. 

It rings five times before going to voicemail, **“This is Nicholas J. Fury’s private line. If you were trying to reach me you should rethink that statement.”** Before a beep.

“Fury, I know you brought Phillip James Coulson back to life. I want to know why and I know-how. Which means I know where you have him right now. So you-” Alea was cut off by the second beep signifying the end of her ability to leave a message.

“You know how he was brought back to life?” Clint looked over at her curiously.

“Yeah, I do. Not a good thing either. Though if Phil is sent through the entire thing he won’t remember being brought back to life, but I don’t know how well it will hold due to how much I’ve been in his head.” Alea lays back on the bed.

“What was it?” 

“Project TAHITI. I worked on it in 2009. Phil did as well. We decided to suspend it after it seemed that everyone was going insane and the only way to quail those memories were to erase the memories associated with them being brought back. Six out of the seven survived it and all of them got new identities. I don’t think any of them got to keep their memories anyway.”

“Do you think Fury will leave any of Phil’s memories?” Clint sounded very worried.

“Should or there was no reason to bring him back. I’m going to find Fury in the morning though. You gonna come with?”

“Of course I am.”

Alea pulls Clint into a lying position. They fall back asleep for about two hours before they both wake up and get ready to go. Laura was already awake and when Alea came down the steps looking determined she looked at her oddly.

“What are you doing up this early?” 

“Fury’s done something that I wish he hadn’t. Clint and I are headed out to deal with it.”

“What did he do?”

“Brought back Phil.” Alea walks out of the house and to the quinjet. She gets it ready to go and when Clint boarded she took off. She hits the button labeled ‘EJ’ on the dash as soon as they are in the air.

**“What do you need, Little Dear?” **

“Contact Agent Maria Hill.”

**“Calling.”**

“When did you integrate Edwin into the quinjet?” Clint came up and sat down next to Alea.

“Been working on it the past few days, finished it yesterday.” 

**“I have Agent Hill on the line, Little Dear.”**

“Put her through.”

**“Carter, what do you want?”**

“I want the location of Fury.”

**“Currently he’s at the Triskelion. Why do you ask?” **

“No real reason. I just have some questions.” Alea cut off the call by pressing the EJ button again. She set course to DC, not letting the autopilot take over at all. Soon they were approaching the Triskelion. She put on the headset that was lying on the console.

**“SHIELD. 0-0-3 this is control, are you planning to land at the Triskelion?” **

“Control this is SHIELD. 0-0-3, that is the plan. Is there space for a quinjet?”

**“SHIELD 0-0-3, you are cleared for landing.”**

Alea put the headset down and started the landing process. Once they were on the ground Alea turned off the quinjet and got off. Clint followed behind her as they headed up to Fury’s office. Agents scattered as the two agents made their way through the Triskelion. Alea pulled out her badge as soon as they made it to the first security door. They made it up to ten floors before anyone tried to talk or stop the two.

"Agent Carter, it's been a while since you've come this far into the Triskelion." An Agent stepped into the center of the hall and tried to stop Alea and Clint.

“Move agent or you’ll find out what all junior agents learn when they spar me for the first time. So move or I’ll show you,” Alea growled.

The agent moved out of their way and they continued on their way. They made it to Fury’s office and Alea scanned her badge one more time. The scanner turned red and an override screen came up. Alea put her hand over the scanner and then typed four numbers into it. The scanner turned green and the door slid open.

“What the hell Carter?” Fury stands from his desk as Alea comes into the room.

Alea rounds his desk and punches him in the eye with her metal hand. She heard something give out as it connected with his face. “I want to know what the hell you were thinking! Philip James Coulson was dead why did you use Project TAHITI on him!” 

Fury fell back and hit the wall. He raised his hand to his eye and it came back with blood. “Motherfucker. Carter, how in the hell, did you find out about that?”

“My link with Coulson. It came back early this morning! So I went down it and found the drawings that the TAHITI subjects were doing there in his mind!” Alea picked him up by his collar and shoved him against the wall. “So tell me, why did you use it on him!”

“Because I didn’t want to lose my best agent.” 

“I’m guessing he’s at the Guest House then?” Fury nods and Alea drops him to the floor.

Alea turns to see Clint smiling at her. “Let’s go.” They leave the office leaving Fury there on the floor. 

Hill comes out of her office and when she sees the look on Alea’s face pulls out her taser and shoots her. The prong land on her right shoulder and she goes down hard. After the electricity stops pulsing through her, she didn’t move.

“Barton, I hope that I don’t have to tase you too.” 

“No, but Alea was here on my behalf.”

“Then help me get her into my office. I was hoping this wasn’t going to happen.” 

“You get the head because you were the one that tased her.” Clint moved to Alea’s feet as Hill moved to grab her underneath her armpits. They lift her and carried her over to the roomy office of the deputy director of SHIELD. Hill directs him over to a couch that was in the corner of the room. Once they get her settled Hill points, Clint, to sit in one of the chairs in front of her desk while she goes to sit behind it.

“So it’s possible that I heard Carter’s yelling better than you, but I want to know if you know what she was thinking when she stormed into the director’s office?” 

“Carter’s mad on my behalf.”

“I’d say that’s more than her projecting. She did just knock Fury around.” Hill put her crossed arms on the table and leaned into them.

Clint started to fidget. “Fury covered up the fact that he was going to bring Coulson back to life, and apparently the way he did so made Carter more pissed.”

“That much is obvious.” Hill leaned back in her chair. “How early this morning did you two know that Coulson was alive?”

“Early. We left to come here before the sun was up. Why?” 

“That’s what I was afraid of. Carter’s mental links are more unpredictable then I or Fury realized. Because I’m sure both of you woke because of the link reforming, am I right?”

Clint nods. Alea rolls over behind Clint and falls off the couch. She groans as she opens her eyes.

“Good shot Hill. Furthest point from my arm.” Alea sits up. Then she stood and walked over to the other chair and sits down.

“I didn’t want to fry your arm, just you. Anyway, you're free to go. You remember the Guest House coordinates?” 

“I do.” 

“Then go. Protocol competition is ‘It was covered in enemies.’”

Alea nods. She and Clint stand and walk out of the office. They head back down to the quinjet and as soon as they were cleared for takeoff they leave. It takes half an hour to make it there and Alea got out first with Clint following. They went up to the door and Alea looked up at the camera just as one of the security officers asked, “How was the drive from Istanbul?”

“It was covered in enemies.” 

“Correct. Come on in.”

The doors opened and they entered the building. Alea leads the way down to the main part of the base. Once there they were met by two ex-SHIELD agents.

“Carter, I didn’t think I’d see you back here after you left the last time.”

“Don’t care. Where do you have the man that Fury brought here?” 

“Room four. I hope I don’t have to show you there?”

“Nope.” Alea heads off down a hall and Clint hurries to keep up. Once they make it to a room with a place denoting it as the four and Alea pushes the door open. There laying on the bed in the middle of the room was an unconscious Coulson. He was hooked up to many different machines. Clint pushed past her and ran up to the side of the bed. 

“Clint, don’t move him too much. I’m not sure how well he’ll do with being jostled.” Alea comes up beside Clint and lays her hand on his chest. She feels for the damage that Loki and the healing process had done to him. She found where his skull had yet to fully reconnect even with the GH.325 in his system. She healed it the rest of the way before stepping back.

“He’ll wake soon. No more damage to speak of. I’ll keep an eye on him, but we need to go.” 

“Why?” 

“Because to keep Phil from having a mental tear the size of New York and possibly going insane. I’ll come and get him after he’s been moved to base.”

Clint nods and backs off. “How long do you think it will be before he wakes?” 

“At most a month. Probably less. I’ll keep watch on his link.” 

They leave the room and then the base. Alea flies them back to Clint’s house before heading back to DC. She went to her own house to wait for the news that Coulson was awake.


	7. June 12

Alea was sitting in her lab looking into the supposed Mandarin Bombings. Nothing seems right about them. No accelerants or anything like that. It was something that was causing issues and they were definitely suicide bombers. Nothing else was known fact about them. She leaned back in her chair and decided to see if Coulson was awake.

_She walked through her mind to the links. She went down the one for Coulson. As she reached the other end she felt that she felt more emotions from him than she’d felt since he’d been killed. She went through to the visual cortex to see what he was seeing. _

_He was looking at Fury. They were in Fury’s office in the Helicarrier. Fury was talking to him about how the fact that his resurrection was restricted to level seven agents and above._

Alea pulled free of Coulson’s mind and headed to the hanger. She got on her quinjet and headed off. She made her way to where the Helicarrier was flying over the Atlantic and landed on it. She grabbed two respirators and put one on before disembarking. She pulled her badge off her jacket as she hit the door to the command bay. She pulled off the respirator as she headed tough the command bay. She headed through the Helicarrier to Fury’s office and displayed the badge to the reader and was admitted inside. 

Both Coulson and Fury were sitting inside. Alea walked in shutting the door behind her. 

“Hello, Fury. Let’s remember what happened the last time you kept something regarding Phil from me?” She dropped down into the chair next to Coulson.

“I do. I also remember that you drug Barton in with you that time as well. I want you to know the fact that Agent Coulson is alive is to be kept to level seven agents and above. Of the Avengers only Barton is level seven.”

Alea looks at Fury with an unamused face. “You do know that Clint can keep a secret? Let us remember who knows my actual last name and who does not. Clint does and you don’t and I know that you have been trying to get it out of him. Anyway, you can have Phil back in a few weeks after I take him to see his family.” Alea stands, “Let’s go Phil.”

Coulson stands and follows her out of the room. Alea handed him a respirator as they made it to the command bay. She slid hers on and Coulson followed suit. They headed out of the door and out to Alea’s quinjet. Once onboard Alea started up the quinjet and headed out.

“So, you brought Clint to see me in Tahiti?” Coulson strapped into the co-pilot’s seat.

“I did. Clint and I both felt the link between us and you break. Then not long after we felt it come back.”

“Sorry, you had to feel that.”

“Not your fault. I didn’t even know how it felt to lose a link. Never had before now.” 

“Wait really? You said you had eight links right? None of them are dead?”

“Nope. My childhood best friend, my brother, my aunt, a brainwashed good-guy, you, Clint, Nat, and Peter. In that order. So no. None dead. You were the first.”

“Well then.”

“Yep.” They stay quiet for the rest of the trip. It wasn’t long before they arrived at his and Clint’s house.

They land and Coulson gets off first and looks at his house with wide eyes. Alea joins him at the end of the ramp and can hear Cooper and Lila’s laughs. Soon the sound was joined by Clint telling Cooper to get his stuff together. 

“Come on, Clint’s waiting.” Alea grabs Coulson’s arm as she heads towards the house. Coulson follows her to the house. Alea grabs the screen door and opens it. The creek of it causing Laura to come around the corner.

Her eyes land on Coulson and they go wide. “Phil, it’s good to see you.”

“You too, Laura.”

Alea hadn’t noticed until then almost all the noise in the house had stopped. She could hear the TV playing one of Lila’s shows. No-one was talking after hearing both Laura and Coulson talk. Likely that was due to Clint freezing up wherever he was.

“Clint’s in the living room.”

Coulson nods and heads into the house. Alea stays back with Laura.

“How did Fury take you coming to get Phil?”

“Better than I thought. I think it’s because I’d already broken his cheekbone once and he doesn’t want a repeat.”

They walk together to the living room. When they get there they see Coulson laid out on the floor with Clint, Cooper, and Lila all on top of him. Both of the women start to giggle at the looks on both of the men’s faces.

“You alright there, Phil?” Alea moves to sit on the couch.

“I’m fine,” Coulson says before letting out a low moan.

“You sure?” Alea gives him a look and he turns red.

Coulson looks away from Alea before saying, “Chest hurts some, nothing else.”

“Kids up off you dad. Clint you too.” Alea watches as Cooper and Lila slowly get off of Coulson. Clint does the same after kissing Coulson. Alea gets up and helps Coulson off the floor and places her flesh hand on his chest. She feels for any damage that happened while he was on the floor. There was some and she fixed it, though she also noticed that he had some necrosis around the injury, even though the GH.325 should have healed it.

“Earth to, Alea. I couldn’t have been injured that bad by the kids and Clint.” Coulson tapped Alea’s side with his hand to get her attention.

She shook her head before pulling her hand away. “No, there wasn’t.” She left the room and headed up to the room that she stayed in. She knew she had medical texts there and hoped to hell there was something on how the muscles of the heart worked in the room. She needed to work on clearing the necrotic tissue and replacing it with healthy tissue before the GH.325 wore off. They’d never really looked into the length of time that the GH.325 lasted in the system and she wouldn’t risk Coulson dying again if she could help it.

She looked around and found a book on how the heart worked and started to read it. She’d work on replacing the damaged tissue little by little. It would take years to replace the entirety of his heart and the damaged portion of his lung. Now just to tell Coulson that she was doing it. Without telling him about Project Tahiti. This was going to be fun. Not.

“Why is my luck this crappy?” Alea leans back on her bed as she thought on how to do it. She heard footsteps come up to her door and knock.

“Alea, you alright?” It was Clint.

“Yeah, why do you ask?” Alea sat up and she noticed that she hadn’t shut the door.

“Because you shouted just a bit ago. Phil was worried.”

“I’m fine. Phil not so much.” 

“What do you mean?” Clint came into the room and shut the door.

“I mean that he still has damage. The drug that was used didn’t fully repair it. It just made it to where his heart and lungs work. Just over a month ago when we went I didn’t see any of the damage that he has now. I wasn’t the most effective way to heal him. But because he had his memory wiped and he knew of Project Tahiti before now and likely doesn’t know because of it.”

“Just say that you're making sure that the scars don’t open up. You’ve done that with both me and Nat when we’ve been injured.”

“You’re right.” Alea smiled up at Clint before standing to hug him.

“You’re welcome. I wouldn’t do it tonight though. The kids have already claimed him.”

“It’ll have to be done slowly anyway. I’ll start next month. No need to overwhelm him right now. You do know that the other Avengers can't know Phil is alive right? Not even Natasha.”

“Level seven clearance then, right?”

Alea nods.

“I can keep a secret. I’ve kept your last name and my family to myself so just another to the pile.”

The rest of the day is spent playing with the kids downstairs. Alea knew she had time to worry about the rest later.


	8. December 21

Alea made her way up to the Parkers’ apartment. May had asked her if she had any plans for Christmas and if they were outside the city if they could come with. Peter had been having issues since the battle and they thought that getting Peter out of New York would help. She’d been planning on going to the Barton-Coulson household and asked if she could bring the Parkers. All agreed it would be good for Peter and it wasn’t like Coulson’s death was public so it was a done deal that the Parkers were going to be there.

That meant that on the last day of Peter’s fall semester that Alea needed to come to get them and take them to the Barton-Coulson house. She knocked on the door of the Parkers' apartment. She heard feet running across the floor before it was opened by Peter.

“Aunt Lea! I’m soo glad to see you!” Peter hugs her and Alea noticed that Peter was only a head shorter than her. 

“Hey, Pete. You got your bag ready?” 

Peter nodded his head. He took off into the apartment and Alea followed him. She could see a pile of bags at the end of the couch. Alea went over to the kitchen where May and Ben were.

“You guys ready to go?” 

“Almost. Need to get the presents together. You said Cooper was five and Lila two, right?” 

“Yep. I told Phil and Clint that Peter liked Lego. Which means that we could bring back one of the largest sets on the market, most likely an Avenger themed one if Clint had any say in it.” Alea sat down.

May left to get the kids presents and when she came back she had Peter with her. Peter went over and picked up both his backpack and his suitcase. Alea and Ben headed over to get some of the bags. Once all of them were picked up they headed out. Alea had brought her SUV up from Virginia and they’d drive to her house to pick up the quinjet that they’d take to the Barton-Coulson household. Alea wasn’t much looking forward to the ride with Peter.

The ride to Virginia was a bit of a mess due to Peter getting bored halfway through, but the ride in the quinjet was easy. Peter spent the whole ride looking out the windshield. Once they had landed Alea lead them up to the house from the jet. Peter skipping in the snow as they went.

Alea knocked on the door and Coulson opened it. There was the smell of cookies and Laura yelling that they weren’t done yet coming from the house. “There you are, Alea. Clint was getting worried about you. Nice to see you again Mr. and Mrs. Parker. Peter, the kids are in the living room.” Coulson moved and Peter ran past to find Cooper and Lila.

“Call us May and Ben. No need to be so formal.”

“Call me Phil then. Let’s get out of the cold. My chest is starting to hurt.”

Everyone entered the house and Alea went to the kitchen to find Clint. Clint was looking sadly at the cookies cooling on the side of the stove while Laura was glaring at him. 

“Clint.” 

Clint looked over at her and smiled. “Hey, it’s good to see you again. The Parkers do fine on the flight over here?”

“Good. Peter didn’t like the drive to my house, but he loved the flight. Anyway, not why I came to find you. How long has Phil’s chest hurt?” Alea sat down at the kitchen table.

“A few weeks now. It’s been real cold and I think it’s aggravating the scar tissue. Hasn’t had any real problems with it.”

“Alright. I’m going to go look at it and you go play with the kids.” Alea goes to find Coulson. She finds him up in his and Clint’s bedroom. She knocks on the door frame before entering the room. Coulson only looks up at her just before she sits down on the bed.

“Phil, you said your chest was hurting?”

“Yes, you think you can do something about it?”

Alea nods and places her hands on his chest. Her left gripping his shirt to keep him upright and the right flat against his chest. She reaches out with her healing powers and burns through the necrotic tissue before regrowing it. She knew that doing it this way was slow going, but it was the only way that she’d found to do it. She’d already shrunk the area by about ten percent. It would take a while before it was gone, but it was working.

They went back down and watched the three kids play together. It looked like they were making a castle out of Duplo.


	9. December 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The stuff between the asterisks comes straight from Iron Man 3.

Alea was sitting watching the news about the latest bombing at the Chinese Theater in Los Angeles, California. The Mandarin had claimed responsibility for it and as she watched the following news report it seemed that there was some connection to Tony. Soon it flipped over to a live feed from a hospital in LA. Stark was leaving the hospital after visiting someone there.

***“Here's a little holiday greeting I've been wanting to send to the Mandarin. I just didn't know how to phrase it until now. My name is Tony Stark and I'm not afraid of you. I know you're a coward. So I've decided that you just died, pal. I'm gonna come get the body. There's no politics here. It's just good old-fashioned revenge. There's no Pentagon. It's just you and me. And on the off chance you're a man, here's my home address, 10-8-80 Malibu Point, 90265. I'll leave the door unlocked.”*** Tony said before grabbing a reporter's phone and tossed it to the wall. He gets into his car and drives off.

Alea gets up and heads over to the windows to watch the kids play. Coulson was sitting on the porch laughing at Clint who had Peter sitting on top of him in the snow. May was helping Lila make a snowman and Ben was pulling Cooper around on a sled. Alea had declined to play in the snow due to her dislike of the cold. Laura was making lunch in the kitchen. Coulson stood and came inside the house.

“I could feel you staring. What’s up?” Coulson asked as he stripped out of his winter coat and boots.

“Breaking news came in about the Chinese Theater Bombing. Someone that Stark is connected to was injured in it. Then Stark threatened the fucking Mandarin and I’m worried about him.”

Coulson put away his coat and boots before leading her to the living room. He forced her to sit down on the couch and dragged her down with him. She laid her head against his shoulder.

“Tony will make it through this. He’s made it through worse.” Coulson ran his hand down Alea’s back as she hid her face in his shoulder.

Soon there was a commotion at the door as the three adults tried to get the three children out of their snow clothes. The first one free was Lila who came over to them and tried to climb up onto the couch next to Alea. Alea bends over and picks her up and puts her on the couch next to her. “Did you have fun out there?”

Lila nodded and made a humming sound. Her right hand making the sign for yes as well. Alea praised her for it. Soon the boys followed and sat down on the other side of Coulson. May and Ben took the loveseat and Clint plucked up Lila before sitting next to Alea. 

“How was your time watching the news, Alea?” Clint puts Lila on Alea’s lap.

“Stark’s up to something, and the latest Mandarin bombing. That’s about it.” Alea puts Lila on the floor to walk as Laura comes to tell them that Lunch is ready. 

The kids run off first and the adults follow. Alea lifts Lila into her booster seat and straps her into it. Cooper and Peter picked seats next to each other. Coulson sat next to Lila at one end and May and Ben next to Peter. Clint and Alea sat next to Coulson after helping to get the plates onto the table and Laura takes the seat between Cooper and Lila. They all eat with small talk going around the table. 

The boys finish their lunch first and run off to play. Lila finishes next and raises bother her hands into the Y sign and shakes them. 

“You want to play?” Clint asks. 

Lila makes a fist and moved it up and down.

“You’re doing so good with your signing, Lila.” Laura unhooks her from her seat and sits her on the floor. She runs off and all the adults look at Alea as soon as she was out of earshot.

“So there was something that bothered you on the news just now what was it?” Clint asked tapping her on her shoulder.

“Stark has asked for the Madrian to come and attack him. He’s just so reckless that it isn’t funny.” Alea stands and takes all the empty plates to the sink. 

When she comes back to the table they all talk for a while. At about five Laura and Ben get up to make dinner. They eat dinner in relative silence at about five-thirty. After that everyone scatters about the house. Alea ends up watching the news in the living room alone when there was breaking news.

**“Earlier today there was an attack at Tony Stark’s Malibu mansion. At this time Tony Stark is missing and presumed dead.”**

There was more to the news report, but Alea didn’t hear it. She’d run out of the house in the direction of the quinjet. She was dressed in a tank top and sleep pants and hadn’t paused to put on shoes. It was snowing steadily, and Alea tripped over a sled and went down hard. She knocked her head on her arm. She didn’t get back up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops... I made a cliff hanger. Also I'm about to head back to college so who knows when I'll update.


	10. December 23-24

Coulson was walking down to the living room after putting Lila to bed when he noticed what was on the news. They were reporting about an attack on Stark’s Malibu mansion, and that Stark is presumed dead at this point. 

“Shit.” Coulson turned around and went back up the steps to see if Alea was in her room. He went to the closet and threw it open to see if she’d hidden there. She hadn’t. Coulson left the room and ran into Clint. Phil was knocked off-kilter by the hit.

“What’s up, Phil? Did Alea need you for something?” Clint put a steadying hand on Coulson’s shoulder. Clint was smiling at his husband.

“Alea’s missing.”

Clint’s face fell and he forced Coulson to look at him. “What do you mean?”

“I went down after putting Lila to bed, the news was on and Stark’s been reported as dead. Alea must have seen it and did what she does best.” Coulson hardly paused long enough to take in a breath.

Clint didn’t respond just went down the steps to see if he could find her anywhere downstairs. Coulson followed him down and saw Ben and Laura both looking around. Clint must have informed Ben and Laura who were in the kitchen about what was going on.

“Where would she have gone?” 

It suddenly struck Coulson on where she could have gone and it terrified him because he hadn’t heard the quinjet take off. He headed to the door and shoved on a pair of shoes and grabbed his coat before running out the door. He heads in the direction of the quinjet and looks closely at the area just in front of his feet as he goes. He hated that it was snowing because he couldn’t see her footprints because they had already filled back up. He noticed an oddly shaped lump about halfway to the quinjet and ran over to it.

When he made it up to it the mound he could tell that it was Alea. He bent over and started to uncover her. She’d stopped shivering and Coulson could see where she’d hit her head on her arm. There was a wound that was bleeding sluggishly. He rolled her onto her back gently before placing one arm underneath her shoulders and the other under her knees. He lifted her gently and as quickly as he could, he made his way back to the house. Once there Clint helped him get her up to her room without jostling her too much. By the time they get her to her room, Coulson was winded. 

May and Laura helped the men get Alea stripped out of her very wet clothing. They then started to check for frostbite. May started to work on Alea’s head wound.

“Is there any way to check the flesh under her arm?” May asked as they started to cover her with blankets.

“There is. Clint, get in the closet and get her kit out.” Coulson moves to uncover her left arm. He’d almost forgotten that she had warned him that if there was ever a worry that she’d gotten any frostbite and or hypothermia that it needed to come off. It would help her get warmer and she’d once said that there was a bit of frostbite underneath it once she’d joined SHIELD. 

Clint went over to the closet and pulled out a toolbox from the bottom of it. He handed it over to Coulson who opened it and pulled out the smallest Allen wrench out of the kit and found the slot right at her elbow and tuned it. The clenched fist relaxed as the nerves detached. He put the wrench away before grabbing one much thicker from the box and working on the four bolts on her shoulder. He got the two from the front side and top of the shoulder easily. He had Clint Hold her arm steady as he worked on the one on the underside before having Clint roll her up on her side so he could get to the one on her back. Once all four bolts were out he put the wrench down and slid the arm down off her stump. 

Alea’s stump was bright red, but none of it had started to blister, so Coulson was sure that Alea had managed, somehow, not to get frostbite. He took the arm and laid it on her dresser as Clint covered her back up. He’d forgotten how heavy the arm was on its own. He knew that it wasn’t steel, but a vibranium arm was still quite heavy.

“Phil, where do you keep the heat packs?” May came up beside Coulson as he turned back to the room.

“There should be some in her toolkit. Clint, you want to check for me?” Coulson leans back against the dresser knowing that the worst was over. That now all they had to worry about was warming Alea up. 

Clint pulled out two small warming packs and placed them both along her chest. He then ushered everyone out of the room. Alea needed her rest and everyone being in the room wouldn’t help that. Coulson stayed behind along with Clint. Both having dealt with much more delicate situations than this and knew how to communicate in silence.

Clint took the seat and the corner of the room and Coulson took Alea’s desk chair. Clint held up his right hand and with his pointer finger pointed towards the sky he bent his pointer finger until the tip was pointed downward. He then brought up his left hand, palm up, to meet the pinky side of his right hand. He flicked his right wrist upward to where his fingers pointed towards the sky, before pointing at Coulson.

Coulson responded with a single hand motion. He put his right thumb on his chest, palm flat, and moved his hand away from his chest at the elbow.

This earned him a glare from Clint, who started to sign with firm hand motions. “Not fine. You carry Alea far. Too far.”

Coulson shook his head. Clint stood from his seat and marched over to Coulson. He leaned over and whispered into his ear, “I know that you have had issues lifting Peter when he wanted to help you make dinner last night. Peter only weighs about half of what Alea does. So quit lying.”

Coulson winces and starts to unbutton his shirt. Once it was undone enough to see the scaring, Clint could tell that he’d aggravated it carrying Alea into the house.

“I feel alright even though it burns a little. I was more worried about Alea freezing to death then reinjuring myself. I knew about the time that Ben asked where she’d go, where she would’ve gone. Last time Stark went missing she went to Fury to try and get a mission to rescue him.” Coulson started to button his shirt when Clint knocked his hands away. Coulson looked up at him.

Clint pinched his shirt at the shoulder and tugged a few times. Then he raised both of his hands in front of his chest and with spread fingers facing upwards pulled his hands down and put his fingers together. 

This caused Coulson to look down at his shirt and feel it. It was wet and he hadn’t even noticed. He stood up and went to go change. Clint stayed in Alea’s room watching over her. Soon Coulson came back into the room, dressed in a black shirt with the SHIELD logo on the chest and sleep pants. He walks over and sits down in the desk chair to keep an eye on Alea. 

They both get settled in their respective chairs and watch over Alea. Coulson fell asleep sometime around midnight, but Clint ever the sniper stayed almost completely still in his seat well past then.

* * *

At about five in the morning, Alea started to shift in her bed. She managed to knock the blanket off from around her head. Clint put back in his hearing aids that he’d taken out earlier. Not long after Alea’s eyes opened and she rolled up onto her left side.

“Shit.” Alea rolled back onto her back when she didn’t feel her arm. “Clint, what happened exactly?” She’d felt someone’s eyes on her and she was pretty sure it was Clint.

“You ran out of the house and fell and knocked yourself on your arm. You had started to develop hypothermia. Phil took off your arm to check for frostbite. Luckily you had none,” Clint answered as he peeled a few blankets off her.

“May treat my head?” Alea sits up and noticed that they hadn’t redressed her. “Can you hand me a sports bra and a pair of underwear?” 

“She did. On the matter of your head wound, can you tell me why you went running from the house?” Clint stood and walked over to the dresser to get the requested items of clothing.

“The news reported about my brother’s presumed death. I know that he isn’t dead, but I don’t know where he is.” 

Clint nods as he hands Alea the bra and underwear. Alea slips her stub into the bra before doing the same with the right and pulling it over her head. It takes a little while for her to get it settled into the right place. Then she stands and puts on her underwear before walking over to her dresser and finding a pair of sleep pants. Lastly, she goes to the closet to find a tank top to put on. She works it on in a similar manner to her bra. Once dressed she goes over and wakes Coulson. 

“Good to see you awake. Do you want help putting on your arm?” Coulson stretches before standing from the chair.

“No, I need to clean the arm. Been meaning to for a few days. Then I need to do maintenance on my arm. Though I could use help doing the cleaning.” Alea heads off to the closet to find the cleaning kit for her arm. 

“I can help with that.” Coulson takes it the kit from her. They head off to the master bathroom to do so. It takes them about thirty minutes to clean the eternity of the stump and the port. This is done without either talking at all.

“Alea.”

“Yes, Phil?” Alea takes the kit and starts to pack it up.

“I’m sure that brother is alright. You want to know why?”

“Sure.” Alea gives Coulson her full attention.

“Because he survived both New York and Afghanistan with minimal injuries both times. It’s likely that he took one of his Iron Man armors and got out of there.”

Alea nods and fishes packing up her kit. Once that was done she heads back to her room and puts it away. She pulls out a spare arm from her closet and connects it into the front and back bolt holes. She then grabs both the toolkit and her arm and goes down to sit at the kitchen table. She works on getting the arm cleaned both on the outside and the inside before making sure that all of the connecting points for the port are working correctly. Once that was done she removes the temporary arm and puts back on the other.

After that, she puts everything away before starting on breakfast. By the time she finished doing that everyone was awake and sitting at the table. She sat down and ate. 

Her thoughts ran wild about how her brother was doing because even though she could still feel his mental link it didn’t mean that he was alright. She didn’t risk going down it because she knew that she could easily destroy the fragile barrier keeping his memories of her back. 

“Aunt Lea.” Cooper walked over to Alea and held out his hand.

“What is it, Cooper?” Alea looked him in the eye.

“Wanna play. You look sad. I want to make you happy! Peter agrees!” 

Alea gets up and follows them into the living room. She saw that they had drug out all of Cooper’s Lego. The three of them sat there, playing with Lego, until Lunch. After Lunch Cooper drags her back over to the Lego, but she turns on the TV to listen to the news. 

At about two pm breaking news comes on. **“At three twenty eastern standard time, there was a bomb that went off on Air Force One. At this time the President is missing.”**

Alea looks up at the TV as shaky cell phone footage plays. **“The footage here shows the thirteen passengers that were tossed from the plane being saved by what appears to be Iron Man. At this time not much more is known.”**

Alea gets up and goes to find Clint. He was sitting at the kitchen table working on fletching some of his practice arrows. Alea sits down opposite of him. When he doesn’t look up she taps the table with her left hand. The vibrations caused by it caused Clint to look at her. He has a look of ‘what?’ on his face.

“Tony saved thirteen people in Miami.”

Clint lifts his right hand to his chin and with his pointer finger touching his chin flicks his wrist forward. His face taking on that same questioning look as he does so.

“Mostly. Iron Man sighted.”

Clint nods before putting his hand in his pocket. When he pulls it back out he has his hearing aids in his hand. He puts in his right one and sits the left one on the table. After he does so he goes back to fletching arrows.

“You sure that it wasn’t the Iron Patriot?”

“I am. I didn’t see the gun that Rhodes has on the Iron Patriot armor. I think I even saw a flash of red or gold on the video.”

“We’ll just have to wait and see. It is more likely that Stark is using the Iron Man armor then Rhodes. Do you need to go?” 

“No, if it wasn’t Christmas Eve I might’ve, but no I don’t.”

“Good, because if you said yes I would’ve sic’d Cooper and Peter on you.” 

Alea stands and goes back to playing with the kids.

After dinner, it was time to get the kids cleaned up and put to bed, and even though they had two adults to each kid it was almost impossible. Alea still wasn’t sure that Peter was even asleep, but she was done trying to get him to sleep. She got out all of the presents that she’d gotten and placed them under the tree with the rest of the presents. Then she headed up to bed.


	11. December 25

Alea was woke up very early the next morning like she thought she would have. Though it wasn’t by Cooper or Peter like he thought it would have been. No, it was Clint sitting on her bed that woke her.

“What the hell?” Alea sits up. “I was expecting to be woken by the kids, not you.”

“Phil sent me to wake you. He was checking the SHIELD database this morning and there was a battle late last night that both Tony Stark and James Rhodes were in. It ended with the death of Aldrich Killian. Whoever that is.”

“Killian is a scientist that SHIELD has been watching for a few years now. Well if Tony made it through whatever happened last night. Anyway, let's head down before the kids riot.” Alea stand and heads towards the door. She makes it to it before Clint even starts to move. He follows her out of the room and down to the living room. 

Alea takes in the sight of the three kids sitting in front of their piles of presents. The adults each had three presents each that were laid out in front of them. Alea found her spot between Coulson and Peter. The boys then start to tear into their presents. 

Alea watches as Peter unwraps one of the larger Lego sets released that year, the [Vampire Castle](https://brickset.com/sets/9468-1/Vampyre-Castle). He then unwraps his present from her which was the [Ghost Train](https://brickset.com/sets/9467-1/The-Ghost-Train) lego set. The last Lego set he got was from Clint and it was based off the [Battle for New York](https://brickset.com/sets/6867-1/Loki-s-Cosmic-Cube-Escape). It, of course, had Hawkeye in it and that was why he got it. 

Then Alea looked over at what Cooper had gotten and she was right about the fact that Clint had also gotten him the same Battle for New York set. Alea sees that he’d already opened the set from her being a [dinosaur-based](https://brickset.com/sets/5888-1/Ocean-Interceptor) set. She guessed that the one that he was currently opening was from the Parkers and it was a [Spongebob](https://brickset.com/sets/3817-1/The-Flying-Dutchman) set.

Alea could see the present that Laura was helping Lila open an [animal-based](https://brickset.com/sets/6156-1/Photo-Safari) Duplo set. Lila had already opened a [Cinderella](https://brickset.com/sets/6154-1/Cinderella-s-Castle) Duplo set. There was also a stacking toy already unwrapped.

“Whoa.” 

Alea looked over to Clint to see him opening his present from her. It was a [quiver and arm guard set](https://www.etsy.com/listing/537521795/leather-quiver-karoline-in-a-set-with-a?ref=sold_out-26) that was made from leather. It was covered in leaf designs and swirls. With a burgundy bottom and green top part, it was a custom quiver that had taken months to come in.

“Alea, you didn’t have to do this.” Clint put the quiver down delicately and made sure the arm guard fit.

“You broke the arm guard and quiver that you typically use here. It’s a back quiver like you like too.” Alea picked up the present from Clint and opened it. He’d gotten her a new set of tools. It looked like the set that she’d had on the quinjet at one point “Is this your apology for hitting the toolkit off the ramp of the quinjet during takeoff?”

“Yes.”

Alea giggled before grabbing the present from Coulson. It was a new hard drive that had a 4TB capacity. Her’s from May and Ben was a new Bluetooth headset, probably for the one that Peter had broken the year before. Her last gift was from Laura and it was a new winter jacket. 

By the time she was done getting her presents up to her room, Clint had disappeared to the barn to do some archery and it seemed that he might have taken both Cooper and Peter with him. May and Ben were playing with Lila as Laura cleaned up the last of the wrapping paper. Coulson was sitting on the couch looking like he was about to fall asleep. Alea joined him.

“Clint take the kids out to the barn?”

“He did. They wanted to see him shoot.” Laura says as she joins them.

They spend the rest of the day doing simple things with the kids. Eventually, they get the news that Tony Stark is alive and Alea gives a little smile. After dinner though Coulson forces Alea to talk about what was going through her mind two nights before. Alea made Coulson come up to her room before she would talk about it.

Alea sat down on her bed and Coulson followed suit sitting next to her.

“I knew Tony was alive. It wasn’t like the last time that he went missing I knew he wasn’t dead, but I still wanted to find him.”

“It wasn’t the same because you knew how it felt to lose a link.”

Alea nodded and leaned back. “I still wasn’t thinking clearly. I mean I knew that he was alive, but he had to be badly injured if they were reporting him dead. I know how it feels to be trapped under a building for days as they dig it out.”

“When the main building at the Stark Expo exploded?”

“Yeah, back in seventy-four. I was stuck under the building for about two days. It was horrible. I could feel my arm dying.” Alea shuddered.

“I read the news about the Expo that year. You and another kid survived because of your science fair project, right?”

“Yeah, but unlike Ryan, I was stuck with my arm underneath a bolder. It crushed my arm right about here.” Alea pointed at her forearm about halfway up. “I’d been getting ready to leave, hell had I left with my friend, James, I wouldn’t have been where I was and I don’t know if I’d’ve survived or not. I’d just put my hand out of the bubble and the bomb went off. A boulder caught my arm and dragged me to the floor...” Alea trailed off and slouched over onto Coulson’s shoulder.

Coulson wrapped his arms around her and gave her a strong hug. He knew that sometimes if you got Alea started she’d ramble on about whatever was on her mind until she fell asleep or you stopped her. This was something that he’d never heard from her and he wasn’t sure she’d ever voiced aloud so he prompted her to continue. “You were stuck there while they searched.”

Alea nodded. “Ryan came to see me after he heard that I’d woken up. He told me that while they found him first he demanded that they search for the rest of the team before they dug him out. He was still in his bubble and he’d opened the zipper to get oxygen into the bubble. Said that he was alright, but wanted to know that his teammates were. As far as I know, he is the only reason that I survived. Doctors said that the water that I drank the first night helped as well.”

“Where’d you get water from? It didn’t rain that first night, did it?”

“You’re right it didn’t rain that first night.” Alea paused and took a deep breath, “Ed had been there hours before and I forgot to give Edwin his sippy cup when he took him. I had put in my pocket. I had refilled it just before Ed had left and it was mostly full when I remembered I had it.”

“Did they end up amputating your arm right after they found you?” 

“They did. You know they tell me that I was underneath that rubble for about fifty or so hours. It was the only choice. I was conscious when they did it. It hurt, a lot. The only thing in my life that has hurt more than them sawing off my arm was the port implantation.”

Coulson shuddered at that. He knew that Alea had high pain tolerance. They’d once went on a mission that ended up with her falling onto some large pieces of glass and she’d barely flinched when the paramedics pulled the glass free. He’d just thought that it was because of shock.

“How did they deal with the bleeding?” 

“Cauterized it right there. That caused a lot of pain too. I passed out after that and didn’t wake up til I was in the hospital. They said my heart stopped once or twice in the way there.”

“I can imagine that that hurt.” Coulson decided to file away the fact that her heart had stopped to talk about later.

“Yeah well, I woke up two days later and the only people who’d been by was James and his family, Ryan, and Peggy. My parents hadn’t been by and hadn’t allowed Edwin to bring Ed by either. Hell, I didn’t see Ed til right before I left the hospital _after_ my prosthetic had been put on.”

“When was your arm put on anyway?” 

“The explosion happened on May third. I was found on the fifth, I think. I woke up on the eighth. I was in the hospital until the fourteenth, and I went home with Peggy then. I didn’t go back to school that year and Howard banned me from the house so I stayed with Peggy or James’ family. I missed Ed’s birthday, which is on the twenty-ninth of May. I was fitted for the arm on the second of June and went through surgery on the tenth of June. So over a month before I got to see my own brother again.”

If Alea had looked at Coulson she would have seen a look of disbelief on his face. Instead, she hid her face in Coulson’s arm. “It was fifty-one hours I was stuck there. It felt like it had been one hundred.” 

Coulson barely heard that last comment her voice barely carrying any weight to them at all. When he heard Alea start to snore he laid her down on the bed and covered her with her blanket before heading to his bedroom. Clint was sitting up in bed looking at a book and looked up when Coulson sat on the bed.

“Phil, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. What happened?” He put his book down on the bedside table.

“Has Alea ever told you about the Stark Expo in 1974 and what happened after?” Coulson sat down on the bed.

“No. I hadn’t really ever asked about either though. Did she talk to you about it?” 

Coulson nodded. “I asked her what she was thinking the other night and she mentioned that she knew how it felt to be injured and stuck under a building.” 

“And Alea being Alea she went on a tangent about the incident at the Expo.”

“Yes. You know she was stuck with her arm pinned for about fifty hours? That the only thing that she had to drink was from her brother’s sippy cup?”

“I figured that it took a while to find her, but I didn’t think it took that long. I kinda knew about the sippy cup part.” Clint pulled Coulson to sit next to him, “You remember that op in Sao Paulo?”

“You two ended up stuck in the basement of a building because the stairs collapsed, right?”

“Yeah, that's the one. Alea mentioned that the doctors had told her once that she avoided some of the worst effects of being stuck under a building because of a sippy cup full of water. I didn’t know that it had been Ed’s. There’s something else that she told you that is what really has you shaken up.” Clint rubs his back and waits for him to continue.

“Your right, it’s not. She said that she coded twice after they removed her arm. Which they removed in the remains of the Expo building.”

“Shit, I’m going to go out on a limb and say they also cauterized it there as well.”

“Yes. The other thing that she brought to my attention was that her best friend in school was James Rhodes.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I mean she never said his last name, but there was only one James on that team.” 

“Good to know that her childhood best friend is still alive.” 

“He is, and let us remember who he’s friends with now.”

“Her brother. I mean he was likely friends or at least knew him when Alea was around.” Clint stopped and looked like he was thinking about something. “Phil.”

“Yes?”

“Stark doesn’t remember Alea. She’s adamant about that. Do you think he remembers Rhodes?” 

“Ed doesn’t remember Rhodey. Not from then at least.” Alea started both of them and they looked towards her. She moved into the bedroom and shut the door. “When I removed the memories of me I also removed the ones of Rhodey.” 

“I’m sure Rhodes was surprised when he met Ed again and he didn’t know who he was.”

“Rhodey moved not long after I’d ran away. Didn’t see Ed again til he was in college about ten years later. I think Rhodey would have been surprised if Ed had remembered him anyway.”

Alea joined them sitting on the bed and they continued to talk about various parts of the Expo til Alea fell asleep. Clint carried her back to her bed and tucked her in before going to bed himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I manged to finish this before I go back to school. Don't expect the next part for awhile though.
> 
> Also, this fic was like 48 pages on google docs.


End file.
